Dear Hollywood: War Veterans Aren’t Here to Kill You. (Guest Column)

You might not remember it, and I only barely did, but a while back, the trailer hit for an indie-ish sci-fi film called Black Rock, directed by Katie Aselton of The League and co-written by Mark Duplass. I sort of pegged it as not my cup of tea and forgot about it, but some of the veterans that saw it… well, they seemed pissed. Alex Horton – a mutual friend through Matt Ufford – asked if he could take a crack at explaining why. He wrote a guest column more on the topic of veteran portrayals in movies in general than this small movie specifically, and it’s a perspective that, as a wussy civilian, I can’t really offer you myself. But considering the way we sort of outsource all our fighting to the all-volunteer force and forget about it, it’s a perspective worth trying to understand, and thus one I thought it was worth sharing.

War Veterans Hunt Chicks: The Movie

An unlikable trio of New England women set out to camp on an island and hash out white girl problems when they encounter three dishonorably discharged war veterans in the middle of a hunt. One guy gets too frisky, a girl bashes his head in, and the two remaining men stalk the three women as they loudly yell about boyfriend-stealing in the woods.

That’s the premise of Black Rock, a film directed by Katie Aselton and co-written with her husband Mark Duplass, both stars of The League on FX. Aselton, Kate Bosworth and Lake Bell star as the women. Almost every review tags the film as a foxy Deliverance, but it’s more Friday the 13th meets “The Most Dangerous Game” meets Travis Bickle shooting johns in the dick.

This really isn’t a review of Black Rock, as that burden has been carried enough at the point (“Lackluster and surprisingly generic!” raves The AV Club). Rather, this is a look at how veterans are typified onscreen. When it comes to portrayals, soldiers in war movies are case studies in archetypes—the tough guy, the soft nerdy one, the Brooklynite, Barry Pepper. But they’re generally normal, and in a good film, probably complex.

But the inverse is true for veteran characters who have left the military, most of whom tend to exhibit the most extreme cases of post-traumatic stress. John Rambo rampaged through a sleepy Oregon town, and Red Forman, back from the Korean War, left a devastating wake of violence and abuse. Driven by their demons and guilt, war veterans onscreen are invariably unstable, violent and sullen.

The consequences of that tired portrayal decay our broader acceptance and understanding of war veterans. Last year, the Center for a New American Security surveyed 69 companies on why (or why not) they hire veterans. Not surprisingly, more than half said negative stereotypes gleaned from media and popular culture made them wary of bringing veterans aboard.

So how do the twisted veterans act in the film? One of the first things we learn about the men is that they served in Afghanistan. One of them gives curt, robotic answers to questions while staring ruefully into a fire. He holds a spoon in a defensive knife position. They have been home just 18 days from combat.

While one—Henry—gropes Aselton’s character Abby in the woods, the remaining two describe what happened in Helmand Province. Atrocities are implied. “Sometimes you can’t go by the book, you know?” one of them says. Henry apparently saved their lives but they were dishonorably discharged in the process.

What follows is virtually the only thing Aselton nails about the civilian/military divide. The girls are at a loss for words or questions as the two men clumsily describe their deployment. They don’t speak the same language, and their experiences are too foreign and dramatic for the young women to grasp.

Their ignorance is symptomatic of a culture that doesn’t know the more than two million million troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. For many veterans, back in school or at work after leaving the service, they are surrounded by those who haven’t shared in the experienced.

The telling portrait of a society uneasy with the moral consequences of a decade of warfare quickly erodes once Henry is killed by Abby in an act of self-defense. The two remaining veterans, Alex and Will, respond by knocking out the women, tying them down and readying their execution.

Now, I don’t think Aselton and Duplass made their villains crazy veterans out of malice or hatred of ‘Muricuh or anything like that. To her credit, Aselton ensures they are labeled as dishonorably discharged in the script and in interviews. But that detail is lost in many reviews, like Roeper’s for instance, in which he simply describes them as “recently discharged” after combat. I really don’t think most civilians know the difference between honorable and dishonorable discharges other than the wording, so for a good deal of people, they’re just war veterans.

The real culprit here is artistic laziness and social disconnection (a more original take could’ve been George Washington: Coed Hunter). The unstable veteran archetype has become expository shorthand for characters with a blend of weapons training and unsettling trauma that, according to Aselton, is a recipe for “a very real threat.”

In reality, there is no link between combat trauma and murder, yet we nod along because the inevitable result of combat trauma is a horde of war veterans raping and pillaging across America.

As the women in the film awake after being knocked unconscious, Alex and Will frantically discuss their predicament. In dialogue that might have been outsourced to a coked out Tarantino, Will shouts, “Part of me wants to do this shit just f*cking haji style bro, just saw their f*cking heads off!”

The implication? Will, suffering the trauma of seeing his best friend killed, has cognitively disassociated himself and is back in combat, his eyes gleaming with potential for gory revenge.

This moment presents an opportunity for Aselton’s characters to exhibit some sort of tension and deliberation beyond her audience’s expectations. Alex hesitates at first to go along with the plan, but in a stupefying and confusing moment, he disregards his objections almost immediately and stands by as Will decides to make with the murdering.

I don’t know why the antagonists in Black Rock are war veterans beyond serving as dramatic accelerants for a girl-power comeuppance fantasy. Aselton and Duplass seem just as clueless. Nothing interesting or unexpected happens as a result of their backgrounds. It just simply leaves room for ugly and damaging stereotypes to stretch into yet another decade, long after Vietnam veterans were first tarred and feathered in cheap pop culture portrayals. My generation of veterans are now treated to the same reductive smearing.

Countless men and women who have returned from America’s wars have succeeded because of their service, not in spite of it. Our middle class exists largely because of veterans of World War II, and folks returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have filled gaps in communities here at home. They rebuild neighborhoods and provide essential disaster relief, most notably after Hurricane Sandy and the tornadoes in Moore, Oklahoma.

Luckily Black Rock has been lost in video-on-demand wasteland, but for us it was yet another movie that cheapened and abused the image of returning veterans as we find our place after combat. War veterans are home, and we don’t want to kill you. Please let Hollywood know.

Alex Horton served for 15 months as an infantryman in Iraq with the Third Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division in 2006-2007. Follow him on Twitter.

As a fellow vet, thank you Alex. I’m glad someone is speaking out about this BS. It’s not just Hollywood that is guilty of stereotyping vets. Many in the media (i.e. NY Times) portray vets as crazed and depressed alcoholic lunatics who beat their wives and neglect their children. Everytime a vet commits a crime, he/she is always ID’d as a “former vet” in the papers/TV. As if just being in the service led them to commit a crime.

I saw that movie a long time ago, when it was on Demand and I agree with you! The movie came off generic and a bit tasteless. I mean when they said they were soldiers, I thought we would get some exploring or something but they turn into machines with very little push. I expected more from Duplass.

I haven’t seen the movie, but there seems to be a phenomenon where people who attempt to do a genre movie on purpose have a hard time finding the line between incorporating the themes of that genre and generic tropes of that genre left un-utilized and unexamined.

But yes, your words are perfect. I mean look at Robert Rodriguez’s career. At the beginning he seemed to be making a twist on genre films with a mexican flare and now he’s just making bad genre films. They got so closed that they merged. And there have been endless directors who want to make horror films (more horror than anything else) that should explore or even play with the tropes but end up turning into bad horror films by the genre’s limited standards!

Well written and much needed. My opinion (and I’m a civilian so take from this what you will) is that the “damaged vet” idea comes largely from lazy writing but also from an ignorance to traumatic brain injury. Vets who saw horrid things don’t seem likely to be violent, but people with TBI (irrespective of combat experience) often experience impulse control problems, anger management issues, and a host of other problems.

I agree. I feel like vets are the go to excuse for “oh that’s why he’s crazy” so that the writers don’t have to spend too much time on why the villains are doing what they are doing. Where if they were regular people, you would have to explain their actions. But just throw in one “Jihad” and you can do whatever you want.

Totally agree. Diagnosis: Lazy Screenwriting! If a screenwriter has a hero who knows how to use a weapon and has strong survival skills, it’s easier to say “ex-Green Beret” or “ex-Special Forces” or whatever to account for those skills. Saves ’em the boring montage of Bradley Marketing Exec having to apply for a weapons permit, learn how to use a firearm, take self-defense classes, etc. Too bad. I’d like to see Paul Giamatti became a remorseless killing machine.

Sorry I’m commenting so late, but in one of the more recent CTE studies — I believe the one that confirmed that Derek Boogaard suffered from CTE — veterans were included in the study group along with contact athletes. They seemed to fit into that same, higher-risk category. Sad stuff… CTE scares the shit out of me.

There are a million-and-one websites out there to talk politics. There are also some darn good reasons people might have to distrust military personnel – both active service and veterans – but this is not the venue to discuss any of this.

I’m sorry, a movie website, put up an article with someone calling into question the understanding and execution of a MOVIE and you think, this isn’t the right forum for that discussion? Which forum exactly do you think IS the right forum for a discussion like that?

It’s not a political piece, it’s a personal piece, otherwise I wouldn’t have posted it. And the cool thing about FilmDrunk is, if you don’t like a post, there’ll probably another one full of Photoshops and dick jokes going up within the hour. (SPOILER ALERT: There’s a post full of Photoshops and dick jokes going up within this hour. I can promise you that.)

I personally like the personal exploration of film stuff mixed with the dick jokes. It’s better than other websites super serious or super dumb techniques. These are my favorite articles vince, don’t lose them!

When you depend on certain political elements for your film to have a certain impact, a film blog should be discussing them and, in this case, ripping the movie for it. Most of us would rather talk about what movies mean and their effect on shit rather that just who’s cast in them of how big their budgets are.

This whole thing feels like using a comment section to talk about how you don’t like the comments section. As a veteran, I fought and died for your right to visit websites you actually like so you aren’t forced by Putin to dwell on ones you don’t.

I saw the trailer for this, and thought it was odd that they would all agree to hunt them down and kill them. It looked like maybe one of the guys was reluctant, likely meaning that he might help the chicks eventually.
I didn’t even know that they were all war veterans, nor did I get any anti-veteran vibe from the trailer. I guess we should probably wait and see the movie before we base any further, harder opinions on the matter.

Ha seconded. Its weird that the Red line sold me on reading the rest of this. Not that I don’t care about veterans, but mostly because I don’t get how Black Rock of all movies spurs discussion about this.

Just because being a vet doesn’t make you a bad guy doesn’t mean there can’t be bad guys that are vets. But movies have to appeal to all groups, so no racial minorities, hillbillies, hairlips, albinos, deaf, dumb or blind bad guys. All villains must be either blond Germans or non-human.

I think the point, and certainly the point I want to make, is that I’m shocked by Vets being so thin-skinned as to get so (i hate this word) butthurt over this B-movie. I think there are probably better, more important things to get riled up about, and I’m positive that no employer is making staffing decisions based upon this movie that no one has ever heard of.

This article only cites two movies in addition to Black Rock that supposedly vilify veterans, and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the point of Rambo. If anything, I think Hollywood has a history of glorifying and white-washing the military and military service, including the Pentagon consulting on movies like Top Gun and Red Dawn, which were more or less recruitment videos. I’m not saying servicemen and veterans don’t get totally fucked over in the real world all the time (which I think includes movies that lure teenagers into the military by glamorizing it), but I think usually when a movie isn’t glamorizing veterans, it’s not trying to demonize them either, it’s only trying to give a more complete, realistic portrayal of military service. That said, Black Rock does sounds like it paints a pretty unfair portrayal of veterans, but I don’t think that’s a part of some larger trend in movies.

This is an interesting point. I think the current problem is that the military receives unvarnished praise and condescending pity, both IRL and in movies. It goes from Our Troops are All Heroes to Bummer That All Veterans are Damaged Goods. I thought The Pacific did a good job of showing that not everybody who served in WW2 (the Good War!) was heroic and that most of them were able to adjust to civilian life afterwards.

Interesting article. I don’t think that it is inappropriate for a movie to explore how being part of brutal institutionalized killing is potentially damaging to a person’s mental health, but it seems that in this movie (I watched it because Aselton and Bell are naked in it) their identity as veterans is just a short hand way of saying that they are crazy. There was no plot or character need for them to be veterans, it was just an add on.

Johnny, please note my comment below, which I think provides a very reasonable basis for the antagonists being veterans. – it means they are good at hunting people, thus the obstacle the main characters have to overcome is bigger.

I suppose there is a valid point to be made that “unstable war veteran” is a lazy stock character, another in the long list of Hollywood cliches and stereotypes. But this piece just reads like a list of complaints from a guy who doesn’t like Black Rock (after saying its not going to be a review of Black Rock). If you want to make the broader point, at least give a handful of examples beyond Rambo.

I also have a hard time believing that “dishonorable discharge” is a difficult concept for a general audience to grasp. It crops up pretty regularly in military-themed movies.

I saw Rolling Thunder finally thanks to Netflix Instant. I’d be interested in your thoughts on that one – unstable war vet as revenge-seeking hero.

fortunately she did had the nice clear scene in “how to make it in america” i think it was because the scene in this – which is the only part of the movie I’ve scene- is really too dark to appreciate IMO.

I appreciate how Filmdrunk can have these classy ruminations about clumsy character tropes in a film like this, yet still leave open a thread in the comment section for uncouth discussions of the actresses’ (and director’s) bare mahobajoes in said movie.

That being said, the screenshots I’ve seen are way too dark and blurry and kinda bummed me out since Lake Bell’s rack is/are a national treasure. 3/10

So is this a product of Hollywood types have a relatively narrow and consistent range of experiences, leading them to fall back on the same lazy tropes and then not catch it in the editing process because they all are informed by very similar backgrounds? That might be a good sociological analysis for a future series of posts.

I’m Canadian, but I’d still like to thank you for your service. We’re all in this together. Great column, too. However, for some reason the whole ‘Follow him on Twitter” line at the end seemed to have cheapened it a little. Maybe it’s just me… Nonetheless, thank you for your service.

“I don’t know why the antagonists in Black Rock are war veterans beyond serving as dramatic accelerants for a girl-power comeuppance fantasy.” – based upon only this article and the preview, I can think of one particularly valid reasons for making the antagonists veterans – it makes them a stronger enemy, and your success against them less likely. IE. it builds the story. If these 3 guys were accountants, it wouldn’t be particularly impressive to defeat them, but because they are trained in the arts of war, beating them means something.

Seriously? It builds the story? Thats why? Thats the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

The entire premise is based on them being vets with issues so alike they all are ok with hunting and killing innocent women who refuse to get raped. Change that and there goes the plot.

I saw it. It is garbage and lazy writing. The movie sucks thats why it was VOD not in theaters.

This article is about more than just this film. Its about ignorant people perpetuating wrong and hurtful stereotypes about people who serve our country and defend it with their lives. These people are not defined by going over seas like these films suggest. Some people are shell shocked and whatnot but that is not the majority. I know many vets both family and friends, I have never seen a movie depicting anything remotely close to their lives.

I like how all the goofballs are like “this is political!” because they all sincerely want to believe veterans are dangerous sociopaths to the point that it actually is a political belief for them… wait, who has ever tried to hold public office on a platform that in any way includes “veterans are dangerous”???

First Blood has been so thoroughly twisted by everyone from Ronald Reagan on down for 35 years that it is now not what it was intended to be, but rather is the movie that society has adopted it to be (especially for the many people who reference it without unsurprisingly having never seen it).

This is the only movie blog I can stand, Vince, and it is all about your attitude.

Similar to how I enjoyed Brendon’s blog-that-shall-not-be-named for a long time, because Brendon – not because I find celebritys interesting. Because they really, really aren’t (certain exceptions are allowed – Aubrey Plaza, JLaw, Allison Brie, Joel McHale, etc). (Also, Brendon is how I found you, so good job him.) – I enjoy your take on movies, even movies I wouldn’t go see if I were paid millions to do so.

I learn things about movies, because you are fun to read.

You continue to post the things you think are of some note, and you continue to squat over stupid movies, and I will continue to get high and post 37 unfunny comments in one article. Deal?

Aside from the love letter to Vince, I wanted to say that I appreciated this article. It hadn’t occurred to me – being a civilian – that folks might feel this way about this particular lazy trope. I’m pleased to have learned something.

I think It really does come down to lazy screenwriters, and I find that disheartening. I feel like lazy writers shouldn’t have a job writing for the big screen. If I ever became a screenwriter, I would want to learn as much as I could about the various subjects I would be writing about. FFS, I Wikipedia things just when I argue with people on the internet. I could do at least that much for a movie, I would think.

I didn’t like the first big twist for Iron Man 3, the Mandarin twist? Because the Mandarin is … well, anyway. But at least it seemed more thought out than a lot of bad guys in a lot of movies. That is the thing that I think matters the most. Think it through. Give him/her/it/them a reason for their hate/greed/insanity/megalomania.

No shame in mentioning Durden, man. FilmDrunk wouldn’t exist without it, and I only sought out the guy who eventually built this site for me if I hadn’t been a big Durden fan. Shame what’s happened to it. And not just because it’s sucking a not-insignificant amount of my traffic with it as it implodes.

Vince I think you should do an origin story segment on a Frotcast. I think I started reading this site when it was reasonably new. I guess I just assumed it was always here, like a proud amaranth among the weeds.

I think a lot of people are complicating what is trying to be said here. I don’t think that the point of this article is “unstable veterans should not be portrayed in movies,” but rather “this film seems be reductive in their portrayal of veterans who have experienced trauma by using it as an vague explanation for sociopathic behavior in an unintelligent and potentially harmful manner. Issues such as this should not be treated as fodder for thrillers.”

I try to not respond to comments in the articles I write; I’ve already had an opportunity to speak, so this is for reactions, really. And there have been many thoughtful and articulate comments (and criticisms).

But I wanted to address one of the more particularly obtuse comments, from Sill Bimmons, who entirely missed the point of the piece and bizarrely compared the suffering (I guess?) with the veterans of Vietnam and the current wars, suggesting they’re incompatible. The comparison I made lies with the social and cultural reactions to troops returning from war, not the war themselves. But since you’re adamant about smearing the character of millions of people with vastly different experiences and backgrounds, consider my uncle, a Marine infantry veteran of Vietnam, who is one of the most gentle and loving members of my family, even as Agent Orange slowly kills him. It seems Katie Aselton and you would agree the horrific things he experienced would turn him into a monster like your friend’s fathers. But there he is, an anecdotal counterexample to your anecdotal response to a point I didn’t make.

Lost in your thinking is the possibility that one’s reaction to wartime trauma is rooted in their upbringing before the war just as much as their experience during and after, that war affects everyone differently. War has produced presidents and murderers. Hitler was a war veteran. So was Vonnegut and Tolstoy. Charles Whitman, Oliver Stone and John Kerry are Vietnam veterans – and man, have their experiences after the war varied! I know war veterans with Harvard MBAs and war veterans who have been homeless. People are absolutely changed by war, there is no question, and it seems attributes one brings to war are accentuated by it. The tropes you mention are just those – tropes. We seem them in movies and TV as the truth and not as one particular facet of truth.

Did you know construction workers and students are among the most common occupations for murderers? I’m assuming you don’t post on movie forums about how you know those student types are violent psychopaths because your friend was the son of a violent father who was once a student. You’d likely conclude students are varied when it comes to mental health and upbringing, and it’d be silly to make a blanket statement about a large swath of people, but that’s probably because you know a lot of people who have been or are currently students. That’s pretty much the point of what I wrote. People usually don’t know many war veterans; pop culture fills in the gaps, and that’s how you get Black Rock.

And just a quick note on your absurd premise of comparing two wars of different eras to conclude the authenticity of claims of suffering, with different force sizes, a different enemy (culturally and numerically), a different force structure (draft vs professional). Once again, you’ve simplified something extraordinarily complex and are essentially comparing apples to firetrucks. The closest I’ve been to an insurgent trying to kill me is about 100 yards, which is, because how rifles work, very close in modern war. There are reports out of Afghanistan where troops are so close to Taliban insurgents that they were throwing rocks and sticks to spook them into thinking they were grenades. One Marine famously beat a Talib to death with his own machine gun. Modern guerrilla war is tough, close, and brutal. It’s not even house to house anymore, it’s room to room. Snipers and IEDs are psychologically destructive, when every step could mean a bullet to the brain or a landmine tearing away your genitals or legs (if you’re “lucky” that’s all it’ll take). The number of deaths is not a good measurement of suffering; In 2008, troop strength peaked in Iraq and Afghanistan with 187,900. In Vietnam it peaked in 1968 with 536,100. I’m no statistician, but it seems quantifying how physically and mentally taxing two wars are by tossing out KIA numbers is not only unhelpful but demeaning. War, no matter how advanced, is still the very intimate act of killing others en masse. That will never change, and its consequences to those fighting it will be the same in Baghdad and Kandahar as they were in Da Nang, Normandy, Agincourt, and the cave where some neanderthal first picked up a rock and killed a being like himself.

My squad once took turns digging up a grave in which an Iraqi man had two daughters and his wife buried in one hole after they were executed. We dug out the mother’s shattered skull; it skill had a blindfold over rotting flesh. Two guys vomited as they dug. I took a picture when he patted it and wept:

“I appreciate how Filmdrunk can have these classy ruminations about clumsy character tropes in a film like this, yet still leave open a thread in the comment section for uncouth discussions of the actresses’ (and director’s) bare mahobajoes in said movie.”

Are there any female driven films — ones that contain both good and bad actresses, that this site has not objectified? The above is a more than excellent quote. Sadly, you felt the need to undercut it. Always follow the rules of Boys Club.

Fair point about the ‘frisky’ thing, but “the character deliberately egged on sexual advances to provoke an emotional reaction from her friend until it got too far and she rejected it, only to be violently thrown to the ground where she picked up a rock ro defend herself” is a bit long for a one sentence summary. But if you’re suggesting I’m dismissive of rape, then you’re probably correct, since every American soldier has either raped, is raping, or is thinking about rape at this very moment. Your “distrust and suspicion” are correctly placed. Especially in the National Guard and Coast Guard, which help in the event of natural disasters, ships lost at sea, etc, etc.